The Essay I Don’t Want to Write

This title may arouse your curiosity; it has mine. As I write intuitively, we are both reading it for the first time. It’s about facing yourself. Last night my son took me to hear Krishna Das. It was a lovely evening of kirtan...him leading the audience in chant and response. I had never had this experience before and it was powerful. It lasted almost three hours and at the end, as the last strains of his harmonium died away, a rich silence was felt. It rang with inner music.

The words that KD spoke were self-deprecating and far-reaching. He said he hung out at the back of the temple where his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and his disciples were. He was, he said, “at the back of the temple in his inner darkness.” He said with a soft laugh that outer darkness is nothing compared to the inner. Everyone can relate to that.

At another point in the music, he also said that all of us have to be forced to serve God.

A truth like that needs lots of space around it.

He speaks of western culture teaching us to be too hard on ourselves. We have to let go and trust ourselves and our lives. Use the letting go muscle.

I read a few articles about him today about how he knew he had to begin singing in America to people who hadn’t known him in India. He offered himself up and the rest is history.

I called this the essay I don’t want to write because I know I haven’t really done this yet.

When I do, there will be lots of space around me.

*****

My mother is in the last days of her terminal cancer. I received a powerful message
from a sage today: “Forgive the cancer.”

Sit with that and be healed.

If you want to write me, here I am.